


Sometimes We Can Choose (And We Did)

by Honey_Butterscotch



Series: A series of unrelated avatar events [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Family Feels, Fluff, Gen, He is sixteen, I swear if i see people who ship them, I will throw you, Im not cool with them, Its just really soft i guess, Its on sight, Me low key hating on Toph's parents, No Romance, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, POV Toph Beifong, Shes twelve guys, Teo's metioned lack of self preservation skills, They are siblings and nothing more, They communicate in their own code, They infantilized her and emotionally neglected her, They're cute siblings, This is just Toph and Zuko loving each other and being soft, Toph Beifong and Zuko are Siblings, Toph Being Awesome, Toph forcefully adopts Zuko as her brother, Toph loves it, Toph touches zukos scar, Warning for mentioned and discussed abuse, Zuko and his wariness of adult male authority figures, Zuko is warm and smells nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25945243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honey_Butterscotch/pseuds/Honey_Butterscotch
Summary: Toph chooses what to do, when she can do it, and why she does it. And she chooses to be friends with their resident firebender. It goes so much deeper than friendship.
Relationships: Ozai/Being A Cock Womble, Toph Beifong & Zuko
Series: A series of unrelated avatar events [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1879483
Comments: 48
Kudos: 888





	Sometimes We Can Choose (And We Did)

**Author's Note:**

> It's really just toph and zuko being siblings ok. I'm a big slut for this and you will never be able to take it away from me.

Really, if Toph _had_ to admit it, it really was her fault just a little. She could hear the way his heart pounded and hear his voice shake just a little. Nah, she didn't hold the whole 'foot burning' thing against Sparky. Besides, he doesn't need another thing to make his heart run faster than a hunted deer rabbit. So, when he walks up to her the night he joins, his hands she can hear shake and a heartbeat going _thumpthumpthump_ a billion miles a second, she stops him with a lift of her hand. "Listen, Sparky, if you just give me piggyback rides and let me use you as my personal heater, then we're set." He agrees quietly and piggybacks her to her bed roll. His hands and back are so warm, she's asleep within the five minute walk it took to take her there. He smells like campfire smoke and spices she doesn't know the name of and even if he did burn her feet, she thinks she can feel safe with him.

It's easy to hang out with him really. He doesn't forget she's blind, even after Katara heals her feet and she can truly, fully see with her seismic sense again. He doesn't try and tell her about the pretty yellow (the fuck is yellow?) flowers or to look at how blue (the fuck is blue?) the sky is. When not teaching Aang, he's quiet and unobtrusive, and he's hard to find. It's a fun challenge, to seek him out in all the rooms hidden (but not really hidden, the earth never hides things from her) and just sit by him. He doesn't feel the need to fill up space with talking like Twinkle Toes or motherhen her like Sweetness, or even make corny jokes like Sokka. In fact, his sense of humor (when he does decide to show it) is dry and somewhat dark. It appeals to her and her jokes are as filthy and dry as the Earth Rumble competitors' were. A lot of the time though, they just sit there in a shadow-cooled room and he lets her nap in his warm, smokey presence. Nobody really trusts him besides Twinkle Toes, and her really, and she's almost glad nobody from their touchy-feely, optimistic group wants to immediately push their friendship on him. He's awkward and obviously unsocialized in a way normal kids are not. And all that bubbly, cozy friendliness would overload him immediately. Toph's stubborn, less obvious friendship? It's what he can handle and maybe Toph just wants to keep him to herself for now.

* * *

Toph notices he taps his fingers against his own arms and knees, and drags his fingers lightly across his palms and right cheek. He does it, not as a nervous tic, but as what must a comfort gesture for when he's alone. Or with Toph, and maybe she feels a little proud and smug over being someone he can do his comfort ritual with. So what? Not like she's gotta justify her shit to anyone but herself, okay? She asks him what he's doing one late night when neither of them could sleep (it happens for her sometimes and it happens for him a lot and they usually end up just sitting in some random room far from the others). He continues tapping a pattern on his knee. "When I was little, I had trouble talking. Talking to people I didn't know or people who approached me too suddenly. My mom...she taught me this. When I want to calm myself down, I could draw something on my arms or legs with my fingers, or tap my fingers in patterns. She would let me do this on her hands when we could. When I was with Uncle, he would tap on me to calm me down, when I got too angry, too upset." He sighed shakily, but his heart was the slowest she had ever felt it. "I haven't had anyone do it with me for awhile now." Toph nodded and took his hand. "Teach me, Smokey." He didn't say anything for awhile. Then he began whispering and tapping, telling her about what constellations he was drawing across her palms and what shapes he was tracing on her knuckles. And she didn't say anything, which was rare for her, and Toph just tap-tap-tapped and doodled back on his warm hands.

Katara tries to encourage her to hang out with somebody else. She crushes the soup pot just enough to annoy Sugar Queen but not enough to prevent dinner from being made that night. Then she walks off, wondering who else she would hang out with. Sokka got a little too obnoxious with his jokes sometimes and Aang wasn't willing to put up with her filthy mouth (even though he was being so fucking hypocritical, she heard him stub his toe and whisper-shriek "Goatfucker!" just yesterday). The Duke was _eight,_ and had become sort of a package deal nowadays with Teo and Haru. And the way the wind carried through Haru's mustache that he supposedly had was one of the most annoying things Toph had ever heard. Teo had grown up in a sheltered temple and she had been banned from sharing the Earth Rumble stories that the older people in the ring told her with him (he was a year older than her at thirteen, he was _fine,_ Katara). Besides, none of them were sunlight warm and smelled like spices and smoke. Zuko did. Zuko listened to her baudy stories that she had laughed at so hard that she choked when she first heard them and even snorted at her even more baudy, dark, dry jokes. He tapped constellations she may not see but still knew by heart across her forearms and doodled shapes she'll never truly know but still could name over her callused hands. And his palms and fingers were warm and just worn to calluses enough that she was lulled to sleep in a way her house in Gaoling could never bring to her. 

"When this is over, where will you go?"

"Maybe back to my old house. I want to face my parents. I want to tell them that I haven't changed, I am who I always was, and maybe they'll stop being so blind."

"Didn't they know how powerful you are?"

"Not really. They babied the fuck out of me and called me helpless all the damn time."

"That's _weird._ I can't imagine you as helpless. I don't think anybody who looks at you can."

"My parents can't see as much as me. Sighted people are fucking weird."

Silence.

"I'm half blind. Do I count?"

"You're half blind?"

"I...yeah. I wasn't born that way but my left eye can see color only a bit and only foggy shapes. I'm half deaf, in my left ear."

"I grew up in nobility, Sparky. I...heard shit."

Toph could feel his heart hammer.

"Haven't told anybody, don't worry. Your father's a fucked up cock womble, by the way."

Silence again.

Then a snort.

"I have never heard someone call my douchebag father a ' _cock womble'."_

His heart was steadier then it had ever been.

* * *

The piggyback rides are one of her favourite things. Zuko is warm and comfortable, and his heart is now steady around her and it feels like a familiar melody against her chest. Sometimes he'll hum and it makes her feel safe in a way she has only ever made herself feel. Her parents never had another child after or before her, and she used to think of what might have been had she been a younger sibling. Then her own bitterness set in and she would imagine someone who would coddle her and smell like choking perfumes and feel like slimy silk. Then she was a runaway and free and never put another thought to that imaginary older sibling who kept trying to hold her like a newborn and smothered her like her parents. And now when she thinks about that imaginary older sibling, she has an older brother who's as warm as a summer morning and tells her what heart shapes look like as he draws them across her palms.

One night, before they go to sleep, he takes her to one of their hideaway rooms and lifts her hands to his face. She feels smooth warm skin and long, thick eyelashes under her right palm and thick, ridged scarred flesh under her hands. She feels his heart begin to pick up and then she draws the heart shapes under his eyes and let's her fingers repeat the first star patterns he taught her (The Dragon and the Badgermole) over the left of his face. His heart goes back to its steady pace that it holds when he's with Toph and Zuko writes three words under the left side of her face that he says he'll tell her what they mean later. Then when she wakes up, him and Sokka have left a note that says they'll be back soon and she can't find anything that smells like home. She doesn't sleep well those nights when she feels an empty pit of homesickness grow into a deep hole in her belly. Katara catches her shakily writing the three words Zuko had written with his callused fingertips and asks where she learned to write 'I love you'. Then Haru comes running in and says Teo's brakes got fucked up and he is now most likely concussed from banging his head on a wall and Teo is tucked in his arms laughing and whooping and telling them that he hadn't felt a rush like rolling down the nearly vertical temple paths since he had first gone flying. She leaves them with Teo's questionable survival instincts and sits in her and Zuko's shadow-chilled room and thinks ' _Come back dumbass, I miss home.'_ And then they're back, with a bunch of people in tow that she doesn't know and she had never missed heartbeat so much before.

His heartbeat is erratic around Snoozles's and Sugar Queen's dad and she doesn't blame him. The man's footsteps and gait say that he's built like a platypus bear and that he was someone who commanded authority. But his voice screams kindness and his heartbeat never picks up in brutal anger and Toph has never had to bear the pain of her parents harming her physically. No, her pain and issues lay with her emotions and autonomy never being respected and her being treated as incapable and coddled to the point where she would rather run away. Zuko, she knew from what those snobby ass nobles and what he had trusted to whisper to her, had experienced the abuse mentally, emotionally, and physically. Toph knew that his dickweed father had made him wary of adult men, especially those with children and in positions of power. She could probably figure out how to bend bones (she could feel the little minerals in bodies like she could feel in stone and soil and if she was feeling really sappy, she would thank the spirits that she was never truly away from the earth) if she really wanted to. Maybe she would test out her theory on Ozai the Bitch Lord. But for now, she sticks close to Zuko when Hakoda is nearby and inconspicuously writes 'I love you' on his wrist. He always writes it back on her own wrist and she already knows that he feels safe when she's nearby. She's part of his little family now, the one he keeps locked up safe in his heart. She tells him that his Uncle is her uncle now too, and he tells her that he hopes she likes tea, pai sho, and (whispered quietly and hopefully and heartbreakingly) being his sister. She punches him on the shoulder and promises that she's not easily gotten rid of.

* * *

His sister is a fucking psychopath and she almost yells that just because she wants to be an only child doesn't mean that she can make Toph brotherless. Toph almost tests out her bonebending theory on Princess Nutcase but then she realizes that she can't feel Zuko's warmth beside her in the saddle and begins pawing around. Suddenly, he's there and he's breathing heavily and Toph has the sick feeling that she could have lost him just now. She doesn't ask because she doesn't want to know what she could have seen. All she knows is that although Azula may be Zuko's blood sister, she is not a part of her family. She is not part his family. Not a part of _their_ family. Toph thinks that Azula doesn't deserve it. Azula doesn't deserve Toph's brother. Azula can have her father. Toph knows Ozai doesn't deserve Zuko either. And then Katara is spitting her vitriol and she can feel Zuko's heart hammers against his ribs and she writes 'I love you' more times than she remember but still means it everytime. He writes it back everytime and is gone next sunset with Katara. She has a scarf this time and she keeps it tucked in her shirt over her heart and punches Sokka in the shoulder seventeen times within the next five hours because that's how many times she writes it under her left eye it that time and that's how many times he asks who taught her that. He has a bruise for a while and Katara doesn't heal it for awhile once they come back. Toph punches Zuko three times on the way to Ember Island. That night, he traces three new constellations on her arms. 

Toph was absolutely correct when she said that the rest of the group's touchy-feely friendship would immediately overwhelm Zuko. Katara motherhens him and pokes his ribs and spine and makes him eat more than the twice a day he had barely been getting away with. Aang releases any inhibitions he may have been subconsciously keeping and takes to wrapping himself around Zuko like a pentapus. Sokka slings his arms around Zuko's shoulders and gently pokes fun at him with nicknames like 'Tea Prince' and 'Theater Nerd'. Suki and Zuko begin to practice hand-to-hand combat together. She's not jealous though, maybe a little irked that now she has to share her heat pack but she's not jealous. She can't be, not when Toph gets to place her fingers on his scar and he teaches her his favourite constellations and she gets to write on his arms and he draws hearts on the corners of her eyes and he calls his uncle theirs'. 

"Do you think that Uncle will forgive me?"

"Sparky, I've talked to Uncle before. He loves you. A lot. Trust me, he has forgiven you along time ago."

"Only because you say so."

"Good. Hey, Sparky?"

"Yeah?"

"What happens if my parents don't want to accept me?"

"Don't see how they couldn't. Who wouldn't want you?"

"Them. They want a doll, not _me."_

"Then they're fucking dumb. If they can't handle you, then they don't deserve you."

"Thanks...dork."

_I love you. I choose you._

"Rude."

_I love you too. I choose you too._

They don't say it out loud. Not this time.

* * *

It's over. It's over and it's after the coronation, after Zuko's heart stops skipping beats, after her and Iroh stay for much longer than anybody else. It's after she spends nearly a year with them, drinking tea and rooting out loyalists. It's after she goes back home and she tells her parents that she in no capacity will allow them to wrap her in silk and swaddle her away from danger, after they still insist that she could hurt herself with the slightest stumble (she doesn't stumble ever) and after she screams and they sob and she bends every bit of metal and stone around her. It's after she finds the local badgermoles and hugs them goodbye and she makes her own way back to the Fire Nation capital and storms the palace. That's when she hugs a visiting Uncle and Zuko tight and says it in the quietest voice she has ever managed. 

"I love you."

"I love you too."

Neither of them hesitate to say it back to her and she's so glad that this is what she chose.

**Author's Note:**

> Did I cry a little writing this? Maybe. Also I was watching atla and I noticed how fucking soft zukos face actually is my boy has such a soft boi face I'm so serious guys


End file.
